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Ch. 5: Austin's End
Back to Arheled It was cold, being stone. Very like sleep, except one did not dream. His mind hung suspended in a void. Gradually he became aware of a voice shouting. His Father’s voice, trying to wake him up. He resolutely kept himself asleep Let old Daddy-boy try a little harder. It worked, he supposed. He was left alone, to sleep in stone: the only peace, he guessed, that would ever be his in this accursed condition. How long it was he did not know. He only rested. Until the voice became too loud. He opened stone eyes, feeling stone flow painfully out of him, and stretched. His insides felt prickly until he shifted shape a few times. All around him the dragons crouched, staring with amused eyes at a frightened, shivering blue girl-dragon. He remembered her, vaguely: it was Camille, Brianna’s friend. She’d been pretty rude to him lately. “Austin!” she screamed one more time. “Help me!” “I think you may want to stay put, dragon-boy.” sneered a huge red-golden dragon. “I haven’t tasted a maiden in…how many ages has it been? Not since Dale, I think.” “Shut your mouth, you big a—h--! Go pick on someone your own size!” Austin hollored. The huge face was suddenly very near to his, and Austin cowered: how did these guys get so BIG? And how long did he have to live to grow any larger? “You do not sling names at Smaug, hatchling, Even Barrel-rider knew more about handling a dragon that you do. Answer me this: '' “It grips while waving but has no hands, though many-fingered in some lands.” '' “What the f-- does that have to do with anything?” The dragon looked completely disgusted. “A dragon, with the mind of an earthworm. What has our Father got in his head these days, cheese? Has he forgotten how to breed a real monster? Have you no conception of riddles?” “Uhhh…a riddle’s something that don’t make no sense, right?” “Wrong!” thundered Smaug. Fire blasted around Austin. He felt the weather-power in him battling valiantly with the incredible heat, until a sudden spurt of power punched through and a miniature thunderstorm appeared around the huge dragon, zapping him with small but concentrated blue lightning-bolts. Smaug eyed the storm with considerable interest. “I take it back. He certainly has gotten more creative since my days. Very well, I let you live, but only on one condition. Both of you hatchlings must answer two riddles: for each riddle answered wrong, one of you dies. Are you ready?” “You can’t kill us, dude.” said Camille. “We’re already dead.” “If you die on Earth, you snap to here; but if you die hereon, you snap to where? That sounds like a wonderful riddle, but I cannot ask it here, for no one knows the answer.” He coiled his three hundred feet of snakelike body around a monstrous crag. The dragons nearby settled down, looking quite interested. “I will ask my first riddle.'' “It grips while waving but has no hands, though many-fingered in some lands.” '' “Hey, um, big guy, do we like get a redo?” said Austin. Smaug blinked. “Translate that, if you would.” he drawled. “I fear your dialect is too thick.” “Um, I meant, do we get any extra tries?” “You have three chances for each riddle, since your intelligence is so low. The game only allows for that many, though it is more usual to allow only one guess.” Austin and Camille frantically began whispering. “Grips while waving—what the heck? Many-fingered? Maybe an ape?” “Yeah! Yeah! It’s an ape!” shouted Austin. Camille nodded. Smaug looked bored. “Wrong. Consider your second answer.” Trying to ignore the sniggering of the thousands of gathering Dragons, Austin and Camille held another frantic conference. “A chicken falling off a fence?” Camille said hesitantly. There was a derisive light in Smaug’s eyes. “Clever. You show some promise. But still wrong.” He stooped closer, and breathed a waft of hot smoke in their faces. “Consider your final answer.” “A mushroom?” was the best thing either of them could come up with, after about five minutes of whispering. “I mean, cause I’ve seen ones with lots of fingers.” Camille added. “Close. But not close enough. The answer is a tree, which grips with its’ roots while waving its’ many-fingered boughs. Choose which of you should die.” “I do not know, brother,” rumbled a giant dragon the color of moss. “In Beleriand in my days, an answer right in one category, though wrong in ultimation, did not incur the full penalty.” “I defer to your wisdom, Lord Gartaronga.” said Smaug, though he looked a little disappointed. “What do the rest of you say?” “They answered wrong!” shouted the dragons. “And wrong they did!” drawled Smaug. “Now. Choose, then, which one of you will die.” “He should!” screamed Camille, pointing at Austin. “No way! Take her!” he howled right back. Smaug gave a resigned upward stare. “Very well, I will decide. I like maidens. Especially nice, plump, buxom maidens. I eat Camille first.” “Wait!” Camille shouted. “I’m—I’m pregnant. There’s two of us. You can only eat one. Your rules.” “A dragon? Pregnant?” said Smaug curiously. “Only mammals are pregnant. Dragons lay eggs. What did our Father do, beget you on a human woman? It would explain much. But as he is still within you, is he not part of your body? Consuming both of you still counts as one.” “No! Please!” screamed Camille. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t wanna get pregnant, but I didn’t have my Pill and then my boyfriend insisted we keep him but I don’t really want to marry him and I wanted an abortion—“ “Is there a point behind this babble?” said Smaug, looking tired. “Eat my fetus.” said Camille. “Instead of me. You said choose who dies. I chose. It’s my right of choice.” A hideous dragon-smile split Smaug’s immense muzzle. “I shall. Most unsatisfying a morsel, but exceedingly satisfying a betrayal. A little dragon-magic, and you’ll miscarry. And I will have a snack.” Camille screamed, writhing on the ground. Something red and soft and helpless flowed out of her contorting belly, under her tail: a baby dragon, two feet long, wrinkled and fleshy, eyes tight shut. Then Smaug put out a long snakelike tongue that wrapped around him and pulled the son of Gerald and Camille into his mouth. “Now I will ask my second riddle.” the dragon said, licking his muzzle. “Made of bone and hued of bone, '' '' Both of bone yet not a bone.” “Uhh…” said Austin. “We get three tries, right?” The dragon nodded. Austin and Camille began whispering again, coming up with ideas wilder and wilder. Finally Camille said, “Ivory.” “Wrong. Ruel remains bone even when carved. Consider your second answer.” This time Austin was the one who finally said, “A prosthetic limb? Uh, I mean, artificial limb made of machinery?” Smaug looked exasperated and disgusted at the same time. “Machines are not of bone, but metal! Consider your final answer!” “A sword hilted with ivory!” Austin bleated. “No, you idiot, it’s a fake skeleton!” Camille screamed at him. “Both are wrong. The answer is stone, the bone of the earth which was builded from the bones of the First Giant when the Gods constructed the world. Thus it is both bone and not bone.” “But, but, but, but, look, man, you can’t just go—“ “Choose which of you shall die, and which idiot I shall be forced to put up with for the rest of eternity.” Smaug said in an extremely fed-up voice. “Take her!” screamed Austin. “Take him!” screamed Camille. “Don’t eat me!” both wailed in unison. “Again, I have to choose.” sighed the dragon. “Well, I haven’t eaten any succulent maidens since Dale, so…I will eat Camille.” Camille hurled a blast of Seeing into Smaug’s face. “Where are you—where is she—what did she do to me?” Smaug shouted, swinging his head blindly. Austin shot blasts of concentrated weather in all directions, filling the air with thick fog, while Camille withdrew the Seeing ability of all the dragons around. They flew furiously up into the air, trying to get as far away as possible. Then the fog suddenly dried up. The air grew so parched and arid the two dragons felt their tissues withering as they flew. A dragon a dusty brown was following furiously, sucking all the moisture out of the air. “Who the hell??” said Camille, as best she could for her tongue was swelling. “It’s AJ.” gasped Austin. “The f--! I didn’t know he’d '' gone dragon!” “Darn right, dude,” sneered the dusty dragon. “And I’m gonna shrivel you up right where you are. I’m a Drying-Dragon.” He breathed a billowing fog of pure dryness. Rocks splintered into dust. Dragons scrambled and flew as fast they could to get out of range. Furiously the weather-powers of Austin battled the dryness: an even match, seesawing back and forth as huge whirlwinds formed and withered, stormclouds appeared from nowhere and shriveled, fogs and drenching rains blew and vanished. Then the mountain range at the edge of the sky lifted it’s head, for it was a dragon bigger than all others, and it was a dead and burning black, and it spat. A bomb of concentrated fire landed on all three dragons, smashing them to earth. They heard dimly AJ’s coughs from miles away. As Austin and Camille sprawled on the ground, Smaug landed with a beating of wings like a hurricane, and seized Camille. “My thanks, my lord Ancalagon.” he said, and closed his jaws on the small blue dragon. She shifted to human from the pain, and his jaws met, and Camille alone of Dragon-born went early to her place. '' You are needed. The Children of the Road are coming too close. Delay them if you cannot kill them! '' The voice of his Father crashed in Austin’s head. The Graveyard was fading around him, as if he was sinking into and through the very fabric of space. Then fire burst around him, many-hued fires. He was in a steep shaft of half-melted stone walls, glowing with heat. Using his wings he kept himself aloft. Several blasted dragon-corpses littered the floor along the climbing way. Brianna, Vanessa, Jeremy and a few others were retreating before six young people advancing steadily downward. Their faces were bone-weary but their eyes glowed, blue and green, white and red, and water-blasts and ice-cascades and beams of weird energy shot in fountains from them, and stone appeared out of nowhere to encase the dragons as fast as they shattered it. “Austin! Cool! We need some weather change in here.” joked Brianna. “You wanna change the weather? F--, yeah!” said Austin. A choking fog filled the tunnel: Austin had never heard of the horrible fog of 1952, which filled London with sulpher dioxide smog of a foul yellowy-brown and which had killed over ten thousand people; but the fog that now boiled and frothed in the narrow confines was likely even more lethal. Storms of boiling rain thundered on the walls and blasted up in steam. Lightnings cracked about in every direction. Out of the smother the Children of the Road marched, not even breathing heavily. A shimmer of blue engulfed them: the cold clear air of winter. A wave of such Cold it turned the rain to ice and even darkened the blazing walls engulfed the storm. They weren’t even wet: the water-girl was…no, she was water itself, her body was water, and she was wrapping up the rains and sucking them into her…What the f--? That was when Austin recognized the guy at the front. Red hair—a hollow, sharp face—he knew him. It was the bike guy. Ronnie Wendy. With an inarticulate howl of hatred, Austin turned the entire tunnel into a tornado. The rotating wind whipped at the Children of the Road, stronger and stronger every second. He met the glance of Ronnie Wendy. '' “Austin,” the voice of the Hill of the Road filled his mind and sight and world, “''look upon my eyes, and gaze into their depths!” '' '' '' '' '' '' Hell. Black, bloody, living hell. He was hell. A thing so repulsive, so earthminded, so unspeakably vile, so unutterably stupid, he had never seen. That rational intelligence should be wedded to such imbecility was a crime against Creation. It was an insult to humanity for an immortal mind to chain itself so to the sewer of reality, to the gross and the obscene, till there was nothing in it that was not filthy, that was not degraded, was not utterly unclean. It was him. He was it. He saw himself stark before himself, and hated himself with a loathing so great he would have vomited himself up out of himself. He could no longer bear to live. He was made for God, and there was no God in him. He could not bear it. He was divine, and he had become a swine. '' '' He wanted to die. '' '' To die and go extinct. Poof. No afterlife. No further agony of existence. Like old Bob the Jehovah’s Witness was always saying, before Austin and AJ beat the old fool up and threw him in the icy river below the gas station. The comfort of oblivion. The mercy of annihilation. He hungered for it. Why did Bob think it a punishment? To exist was the worst punishment there was. '' '' '' The black redness grew. Everything was red now. Red, and stony. Back again. Back in the Graveyard of Dragons. There was no escape. No release from his damnation. Cursed to keep existing. “F-- you! F-- you, God!” he screamed. The dragons had gone somewhere else. Or he was in an uninhabited part of the Graveyard. It seemed to be empty. Empty as his loathsome soul. Wedded to himself. To that horrid little poopspittle Austin. He shuddered at its’ existence. He remembered a punishment he’d heard about, somewhere, of a live man chained to a rotting corpse, face against face, naked against naked, until he too took ill and died. He felt like that man. If you die here, to where do you snap? Or maybe there was no snap. Maybe if he died here, he’d go poof. Like the Witnesses promised. Maybe not. He might be able to hide here, to try to clean himself off. The thought intruded, like an uncomfortable blade, a thorn digging into a festered wound. He felt it, bright, alien, and squirmed away from it. He couldn’t do that. End, end, end. Die and go kapoof. He spread his wings and climbed to a great height. Wastes of red stone to the end of sight. He smiled, pasting a smile on his horror-wracked face, pretending he liked this, pretending he enjoyed the view, the sensation of flight. Fool him. Fool my Father. Keep my despair off my face. Now he banked in a long swooping dive. This had to be timed just right. Sweep by that crag. Miscalculate on purpose. Yes, that was it. Then shift his head to human. The crag was before him. Damn you, Daddy. He shifted his head. The ragged stone smashed it instantly. He tumbled from the sky, completing the shift, till his human body, he felt dimly, would splatter on the stones. He was falling, tumbling. He could turn. All it took. Turn your head up. Turn to what was good. Damn the good. Damn the bad. I am through and I am dead. Not even my Father can resurrect the dead. Damn the world. Damn you all. 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